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Brian Smith is city editor and a reporter for the Peninsula Clarion. He covers local government, health, energy and environment.
He drove the AlCan from Colorado, where he grew up. He graduated from Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colo., in 2009 with a degree in mass communications. He started his career at the Craig Daily Press in Craig, Colo., where he covered government, environment and courts. He previously interned with his hometown newspaper, the Longmont Times-Call in Longmont, Colo., and was the editor of The Criterion, Mesa State’s student newspaper.
He previously worked as a charter boat deckhand out of Seward for two summers during college. Now he fly fishes but rarely catches, will burn a tank of gas aurora-chasing and is learning to appreciate the Alaska way.
Find him here: www.facebook.com/briansmitty

The Kenai Borough Employees Association announced earlier this week it had reached a tentative agreement with the Kenai Peninsula Borough administration on terms of a three-year collective bargaining agreement.

Terry Bookey, Central Emergency Services Captain and union negotiating team chair, said the two sides met about 20 times in the process of reaching the agreement that he said both sides will likely find beneficial to run from fiscal years 2013 to 2016.

Three Soldotna men were arrested on April 4 in connection with the delivery of a large quantity of heroin, delivered through the mail and intercepted by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Alaska Bureau of Investigation.

Two of the men arrested have been charged with various felonies and misdemeanors in connection with the case.

After winning his first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 2004, Mitch Seavey spent nine years trying to get his second title, all the time thinking that if he ever reached the burled arch in Nome first again “that’d be it.” That he’d hang up the sled and retire from the sport.

But when the 53-year-old Sterling musher did just that in early March, becoming the race’s oldest winner, thoughts of retiring were far from his mind. And they still are, he said.

Sometimes it’s long — the number of months it takes a homeless family to find permanent shelter again.

And sometimes it’s shorter — like the constant drip, drip, drip of melting snow finding its way from the roof through the ceiling and into scores of coffee cans stacked in various locations around the old hotel.

“It’s our indoor water feature,” said Leslie Rohr, Executive Director of Love INC of the Kenai Peninsula, which operates the Family Hope Center housed at the Merit Inn.

For 24 years, Greg Brush has been cementing the foundation of his life — faith, family and fish.

When he was a 27-year-old, he abandoned his union job, moving away from Northern California’s salmon and steelhead fishing in search of the famous, giant king salmon. He built his life around that decision — he met his wife, had kids, bought a house and built his business as a full time Kenai River guide.

The foundation was solid, he thought, until he looked closer this summer and noticed the cracks forming. The king salmon on the river in decline, Brush looked for a reason.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly has introduced an ordinance that would rollback anadromous waters habitat protection regulations to include only a handful of the area’s largest rivers and tributaries.

A 50-year-old Nikiski man pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of sexual abuse of a minor and incest Tuesday in Kenai Superior Court.

John Christensen Jr. was originally charged in August of 2012 with 10 counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree, incest and attempted sexual abuse of a minor. He was then arraigned in district court, but the two counts of sexual abuse of a minor were dismissed in mid-March of this year after the state failed to produce evidence at a scheduled preliminary hearing.

Before being sentenced on charges of dealing methamphetamine, Carolyn McGee was described by her defense Wednesday as an addict, her life spinning out of control following the death of her young son, also a meth addict.

“I just don’t think you wake up one morning and decide you are going to become a meth addict,” said Dina Cale, who represented McGee from the Office of Public Advocacy. “I think there was a triggering effect. I think the death of her son contributed to that.”